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My absolute must-have tool is a perl script I wrote to rename files using a series of regular expressions. Because it's implemented in perl, the command-line regular expressions can be just as complex as a perl regular expressions. I use it as much as or more than as I use "mv" to rename files.

If it sounds interesting, you can find it here.

Michael.

My absolute must-have tool is a perl script I wrote to rename files using a series of regular expressions. Because it's implemented in perl, the command-line regular expressions can be just as complex as a perl regular expressions. I use it as much as or more than as I use "mv" to rename files.

If it sounds interesting, you can find it here.

Michael.

The program you're looking for is called Mac Minder. I've used it to monitor the amount of time my young sisters spend on their computer at home and it works flawlessly. If you're also looking for a filtering solution try Dan's Guardian which has been turned into a package for MacOS users called DG Complete.

Michael.

"With this hand you can clutch objects such as a ball, ..."

... hold a lightsaber, and clutch the air, palm upwards, as you tell someone you're their father.

Michael.

E = mc^2 is Not Einstein's Discovery

Robert A. Herrmann

1. Introduction
It appears that some scientists have not received the proper credit for significant discoveries for which they have priority. However, without specific and irrefutable information, it is not possible to give convincing reasons why these individuals have been denied recognition and why others have been given credit for their scientific discoveries. In 1996, I was asked whether certain aspects of General Relativity were originally formulated by Einstein or Hilbert. (Hilbert presented the gravitational equation(s) prior to Einstein.) The questioner said that he knew very little about Einstein's achievements except for such things as "E= mc^2." I answered his question relative to the Hilbert verses Einstein controversy but I neglected to discuss the more easily explained E = mc^2. What follows in this short article shows exactly who developed the idea that "radiation" can be characterized as having an apparent mass and that it was not Einstein in his 1905 paper. Except for the last remarks on Olinto De Pretto, this article is concerned mostly with "radiation" and its relation to E = mc^2. ...

read more...

Michael.

"You expect me to talk, OSS?"
"No, Mr. Gates, I expect you to die."

Michael.

Using MacOS to drive your display: +5 HP, +10 Dexterity.

Michael.

You are doing an excellent job of rationalizing your consumption by showing all console manufacturers in a negative light. However, I feel that Microsoft truly stands alone as company that should not be supported. It's all fun and games now (literally) but what happens when they achieve their next monopoly? No monopoly MS product, such as WinXP, MSIE, or MS Office, come to mind as inexpensive or high quality.

Further, if you feel that all console manufacturers are tainted (which I disagree with) you have another alternative as well. Stop consuming. No one is forcing you to buy any of these products. One could simply take a stand, placing their personal values above their need to consume.

Personally, I chose Nintendo supplemented with gaming on MacOS. It's an excellent combination and provides me with the piece of mind that I'm not paying MS to dismantle the competition and take my choice away.

Michael.

I recommend the Volume Logic plugin for iTunes. It provides dynamic automatic gain control (AGC) over multiple bands. I find it really brings out the nuances in quiet music without blowing me away, when things get loud.

Michael.

I'd just like to take a moment to remind everyone, especially gamers, that Microsoft is using capital from its monopoly control of operating system and office productivity software to subsidize its takeover of the gaming market. I strongly encourage avoiding the Xbox (and Microsoft in general), to prevent the spread of their monopoly.

I recommend visiting the site MS Eradication for information on why Microsoft is so bad. The site includes a list of predatory behavior towards competitors, hostile treatment of customers, and even the use of spyware written by and included in WinXP by Microsoft itself.

This is not a gaming system you should be throwing your support behind.

Michael.

I'm quite open to novel mechanisms to data entry and have experimented with a few in the past. However, these keyboards are often optimized for typing English text while unwittingly complicating the entry of shell and vi commands, which are just as important to me.

I'd like to see a keyboard designed around the key usage of a sysadmin who uses vi and tcsh (and other obscure programs such a emacs).

Michael.

I didn't just bother to try GNU/Linux (with fvwm or KDE). I was an early adopter in 1992 originally using Slackware (I remember running around campus with a huge stack of floppies) and have ecently moved to SuSE. I have not used MS Windows for almost a decade.

My wife bought our first Apple product, a power book, about two years ago. After adjusting to its interface and learning to make it act more like a GNU/Linux window manager (fvwm or KDE) and supplementing its version of Unix with GNU software via "fink," I found it had everything that my GNU/Linux machine had plus several very important features -- the user interface was zero maintenance, automatically updated, and beautiful.

Naturally, I use GNU/Linux where it has the greatest utility. I feel for a server, the time spent configuring the system is worth the extra effort. As for a KDE-on-GNU/Linux desktop, while it is better than running Windows for its GNU goodness, the Linux GUIs are not quite up to the MacOS level yet.

I think we are all various combinations of zealot and fanboy. I am much more of an anti-Microsoft zealot than a fanboy of either MacOS or GNU/Linux. I simply choose what works best for me out of the non-MS pool.

Michael.

I hate to say it but I just can't use Linux as a desktop any longer. I've completely switched to MacOS X for all my work both at home and at work. It gives me all the Unix goodness I'm accustomed to with a great zero-maintenance UI.

That's not to say that Linux doesn't have a place in my home, though. I currently have a headless box in my closet that's my home NFS server with several websites on it.

Michael.

You are correct.

The slashdot tagline suggests a "humorous" story but if you read the article it talks about an ignorant police force (unable to use ATM machines or a computers) beating confessions out of people with a belt. I do not find this humorous. Also, my remarks have absolutely nothing to do with India.

Michael.

I don't find an ignorant police force beating confessions out of people with a belt that humorous.

Michael.

Let's all just capitulate and make the official format a Microsoft Word document.

Michael.

I've done Mach 5.

Michael.

I've done Mach 5.

Michael.

I have no idea what my call to vote followed by a recent news story which relates to the original post in a humorous way has to do with what you said.

Your bewildering reply disturbs me.

Michael.

This November vote and put an end to this nonsense!

Unless of course the voting is postponed due to terrorist threats.

Michael.

I always use "privacy@devnull.com".

Michael.

I signed up for a Second Life (SL) account and now I'm hooked. In addition to the gestures and RPC that's been added in version 1.4, there's an existing feature that readers of Slashdot might be equally interested in. Objects in SL can be animated, manipulated, and enhanced with scripts that have similar syntax to C, Java, and perl.

Having coded perl for years, I was impressed when I read up on their scripting language. C, Java, and perl purists should get an account just to celebrate the absence of VB.

Michael.

I signed up for a Second Life (SL) account and now I'm hooked. In addition to the gestures and RPC that's been added in version 1.4, there's an existing feature that readers of Slashdot might be equally interested in. Objects in SL can be animated, manipulated, and enhanced with scripts that have similar syntax to C, Java, and perl.

Having coded perl for years, I was impressed when I read up on their scripting language. C, Java, and perl purists should get an account just to celebrate the absence of VB.

Michael.

They've demangled "mbs" and "mps." Now if they could only add the requisite nonbreaking space(7.2) between the number and units and capitalize the "M" to represent 1e6 we'd be set.

Michael.

I desperately would like to see the integration of multimode text editors into more GUIs. Right now there is a usability ceiling built into GUIs. They're designed for beginning and intermediate users with no advanced user features. The productivity jump I gained from moving from a standard text editor to vi was profound. Now I'm forced to dumb it down in GUIs.

Michael.

You're right. What I should of said is that efficiency is a logistic function. You can read about the difference between exponential, logarithmic, and logistic functions here.

Michael.

I understand now. At first I was puzzled by your reference to "M.A.L.T.H.U.S.". I thought it was a computer (like W.O.P.R. in War Games) and perhaps you were humorously implying that I was being too analytical. After searching for 10 minutes for a computer named "M.A.L.T.H.U.S.," I took a guess and assumed you just meant "Malthus" as in Thomas Malthus. It seems now I was correct, although after reading your post above, I realize now that it was in fact an ad hominem argument, where the use of Thomas Malthus's name is a negative connotation meant to discredit the analysis. Given that your rehtoric was modded up and my post was modded down twice as "overrated", it seems that I have stumbled upon something that I didn't realize was controversial! Naturally, both posts deserve a reply, so first I'll hit the rhetoric and then I'll swing around and restate the science.

Both your models are overly simplistic and overly pessimistic. ... They are overly pessimistic ... Your tone, even if you did not intend it, gave the impression ... You and Malthus sound defeatist and pessimistic ... some factions of the greens and environmentalists (not necessarily from you, but others that share your views ... If you were alive then you would have been standing right next to Augustus pointing out that ...

Amusingly, none of this is accurate. What you've done is attributed to me by means of a single post my state of mind (pessimism), my point of view (green or environmentalist), and my hypothetical actions (right next to Augustus pointing out). It seems this post is a rhetoric rebuttal to a perceived point of view, where you cloak me in attributes that you disagree with, using those attributes as sounding boards for your own opinions. Unlike your first attempt at rhetoric (which was quite successful and even gave me a refresher on Thomas Malthus), this post mixes rhetorical and logical arguments, neither of which support each other. Further it runs the risk that I'll post a reply stating that you're quite mad for reading all that into a single post (which I believe I just did). (Although I have to say I'm very amused that you placed me into European history and attributed to me the perpetuation of the Dark Ages! I'm still giggling about that. ;)

As for the science, improvements in efficiency are by definition logarithmic. As time goes to infinity the efficiency of a given system approaches but never reaches the 100%-efficiency asymptote. The product of a logarithmic and exponential function as they go to infinity is an exponential function. Thus, if the concern is the consumption of a finite resource or the creation of undersirable waste, an improvement in efficiency will not solve the problem as long as the consumption or generation is exponential. That's all I'm saying in that post. Nothing more, nothing less.

As for where I was going with such a thought, I did expand on it later in this post.

Michael

The closest that Thomas Malthus came to my post is his belief that the increase of population at a geometric rate and the growth of food supply at an arithmetic rate would lead to starvation. He thus espoused favoured "moral restraint" (including late marriage and sexual abstinence) as a check on population growth.

As we know, food production can also be exponential. There's nothing intrinsically that makes its growth an "arithmatic rate". Contrast this with efficiency, where it's change in time is always logarithmic. There is a definite maximum limit (100% efficiency) which systems approach over time. Thus one shouldn't look to solutions which are logarithmic in time to solve problems which are exponential in time (the original poster made such a claim).

Michael.

Exactly! That curve you describe is a Gaussian curve. It occurs when there is an exponential draw on a finite resource. It can be seen in the population of bacteria over time when bacteria are grown in a finite medium. It can be seen as the Hubbert curve which describes accurately oil production as a function of time.

With these three functions (logarithmic, exponential, and gaussian) one can draw several conclusions about the future of humanity. Ultimately unlimited exponential growth is not possible. Whether it is energy consumption, human population, or the economy, they all must stop growing eventually. One of the arguments that people reach for when arguing for unlimited exponential growth is improvement in efficiency or conservation. Unfortunately, those functions are logarithmic and cannot offset exponential growth indefinitely. Thus the only alternative is an end to exponential growth. Whether steady state manifests itself as constant, oscillatory, or a descent to zero as in a Gaussian, it must happen.

Michael.

This won't be a weapon in the fight against global warming, oil depletion, rising energy costs, and so on. The reason is that all improvements in efficiency are logarithmic whereas growth is exponential.

A logarithmic function will increase rapidly at first and then slow as it reaches an asymptotic limit at infinity. In the case of efficiency it starts low and as improvements are made efficiency approaches but never quite reaches 100%. It's logarithmic. Growth on the other hand is exponential. It starts small and then heads toward infinity.

Thus in the long run a logarithmic decrease cannot overcome an exponential increase.

Michael.

In crosswords, the "dimensions" don't necessarily have to be orthogonal. It is permissible to create several coplanar vectors (called "directions" instead of "dimensions") that intersect at various angles. For instance you could use squares (two directions), hexagons (three directions), octagons (four directions), and so on. The closest to what you were asking for would be hexagonal shapes with words moving "down", "up-across", and "down-across".

If your three word vectors must be orthogonal, I have seen sparse 3D crosswords drawn in 2D in perspective. They were sparse to allow the reader to solve words that would otherwise be occluded by a dense crossword. A dense orthogonal 3D crossword could be represented in many slices of a traditional 2D crossword.

Michael.

In crosswords, the "dimensions" don't necessarily have to be orthogonal. For instance to do a 3D crossword puzzle, hexagonal boxes will allow one to make words in three directions, "down", "up-across", and "down-across". To make a "4-dimensional" crossword you could stack several slices of these hexagonal structures or even migrate to octagons.

Michael.

For those studying German, I have a German-English Dictionary, German-English Hyperdictionary, and an overview of German Phonetics in SAMPA online.

Additionally, for students of the English language, I also have an English phonetic transcription program that will output phrases in IPA, SAMPA, CMU, HTML, and LaTeX format.

Michael.

For those studying German, I have a German-English Dictionary, German-English Hyperdictionary, and an overview of German Phonetics in SAMPA online.

Additionally, for students of the English language, I also have an English phonetic transcription program that will output phrases in IPA, SAMPA, CMU, HTML, and LaTeX format.

Michael.

For those studying German, I have a German-English Dictionary, German-English Hyperdictionary, and an overview of German Phonetics in SAMPA online.

Additionally, for students of the English language, I also have an English phonetic transcription program that will output phrases in IPA, SAMPA, CMU, HTML, and LaTeX format.

Michael.

For those studying German, I have a German-English Dictionary, German-English Hyperdictionary, and an overview of German Phonetics in SAMPA online.

Additionally, for students of the English language, I also have an English phonetic transcription program that will output phrases in IPA, SAMPA, CMU, HTML, and LaTeX format.

Michael.

For those studying German, I have a German-English Dictionary, German-English Hyperdictionary, and an overview of German Phonetics in SAMPA online.

Additionally, for students of the English language, I also have an English phonetic transcription program that will output phrases in IPA, SAMPA, CMU, HTML, and LaTeX format.

Michael.

The analogy holds for positive and negative reasons.

GNU/Linux is affordable. MacOS is expensive. GNU/Linux is utilitarian. MacOS is luxurious.

At home I have a GNU/Linux server and two Apple laptops. At work I have a GNU/Linux server, an Apple G5, and a Sun Blade 2000.

If you're a GNU/Linux troll, who got their feelings hurt, you can relax. It's all Unix.

Michael.

When I worked at UnixOps we had several different versions of /etc/sudoers that were distributed by rdist to servers and clients across campus. One could edit a single file and push the changes out to all machines with a single command.

Michael.

Name: hello, world
Dialect: English
Version: 5 June 2000
Comments: Not the canonical var'aq "hello, world"; actually prints "What do you want, universe?" in Klingon

~ nuqneH { ~ 'u' ~ nuqneH disp disp } name
nuqneH

Mmm. Rhetoric. Let's show 'em how rhetoric works boys.

Join a corporation and lose any individual decision making in your career path while bureaucratic, professional company leaders rake in the cash and power.

A corporation turns everyone into one neck, ready for one noose.

Whee! It's like we don't even have to think.

Michael

Every time I see a story like this I post the same thing.

Form a union. You should be paid for the hours you work. Anything else is the theft of your time and money by your employer. You say legislation allows employers to legally ask you to work overtime without pay? Vote for people who support your right to be paid for time worked.

Union. Vote.

Michael.

The best way to learn LaTeX is to take and modify someone else's source code.

For that reason, I have the source code for my thesis and an IEEE technical publication on my website here. It should work with a vanilla LaTeX installation in both Linux and MacOS (just type "make preview"). In Windows you'll need to install MikTeX and TeXnicCenter.

Michael.

The best way to learn LaTeX is to take and modify someone else's source code.

For that reason, I have the source code for my thesis and an IEEE technical publication on my website here. It should work with a vanilla LaTeX installation in both Linux and MacOS (just type "make preview"). In Windows you'll need to install MikTeX and TeXnicCenter.

Michael.

ludum dare - to give free play to

Michael.

Is {pluto|sedna} a Planet?

Speaking of planets, what kind of crazy regular-expression planet do you come from?

Your alternatives don't require grouping (if they did use parentheses not curly braces) and you have to quote the special character "?", as such:
Is Pluto|Sedna a planet\?

All obscure regular expression trolls are required to be modded as funny or insightful as per the Slashdot moderation guidelines.

Michael.

It's more than what you call "bloated salaries", which is more aptly called "wages adjusted to cost of living". One must realize that often these replacement workers may not have retirement plans, health insurance, or high workplace safety standards and the costs associated with them. This difference in cost due to environmental, political, or economic differences between countries in known as comparative advantage.

If a country has a significant comparative advantage over another which might lead to the loss of critical infrastructure in another country, that country might enact a protective tariff to prevent the loss of that manufacturing ability. For example, Bush enacted a steel tariff in March of 2002 which taxed steel imports between 8% and 30% depending on the type of steel. It's estimated that the protective tariff added $300 per year to a family of four's expenses through the purchase of automobiles or household appliances.

In the case of videogame software it is unlikely that a protective tariff would be created to preserve the videogame programming infrastructure. However, what I feel could be accomplished is a human-rights tariff. This tariff would be added to all goods to compensate for the use of low-wage labor which is worked beyond 40 hours per week, is not given health insurance, and works in suboptimal working conditions. Thus it would remove the comparative advantage achieved through the use of underpaid, uninsured, overworked employees and might give us a fighting chance.

Michael.

I know how people hate hearing that "Apple has already done it" but it must be said. In MacOS they've replaced the picture of a floppy used for their save icon with a holographic crystal. You've all heard that all Apple hardware comes with holographic drives now right?

Michael.

Being recognized as simultaneously sexy and a gamer is not inherently objectification. I think you'd agree that the original contest seeking sexy male and femal gamers is relatively benign. However, I believe the article referenced in my original post crossed the line when it subjected the female and only the female winner of the contest to questions with strong sexual content.

The argument in your first sentence is that because the original contest may have a small degree of both male and female objectification present, that escallating that objectification in a subsequent interview for only the woman should only be expected. You follow that because a woman engages in acts which allow themselves to be objectified that they must submit to subsequent attempts willingly. This is essentially an argument to excuse serial victimization which employs the victim's past behavior as justification. This bit of circular logic assumes that the existance of objectification justifies further objectification. What I'm trying to say is that objectification is inherently bad and the article in question clearly directed it at a female while ignoring the male.

I believe it is just common sense that the questions quoted in my top post could only be asked of a person who has been reduced to the status of an object. Could you ask a coworker or boss such questions? What if they were voted first place in a sexy boss gamer competition? Would you ask those questions of a man?

Michael.

Being recognized for being attractive or even sexy is possible without objectification. Like intelligence it's a quality we all posses in some amount. The contest was seeking a woman and man who are both avid game players and are sexy. During the interview, the reporter asks three questions which allude to intercourse (2) or masturbation (1). Additionally, these questions were only asked of the female (the male was given no interview).

These two facts demonstrate two things. The interviewer's questions were sexual (not sexy) in nature. These questions were asked only of the female. This is clear sexual objectification of women. It wouldn't be either if the questions didn't involve references to intercourse and masturbation and the man was asked the same questions.

A good test of inappropriate questions are:
Would you pose this question to a female family member (grandmother, mother, sister)?
Would you pose this question to a female in a position of power (boss, judge)?
Would you ask a man that question?

Michael.